Re-selling 101 – What Defines You As a Successful Re-seller?

A lot of people get it twisted when they think about a successful re-selling business in sneakers.  Yes, 100% agreed hyped sneakers is what defines the market, but this segment only represents a very very small share of the entire sneaker industry.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out as many of you may also know…what makes these hyped sneakers “hype” is based on low supply and high demand.  So how can such low supply items represent a majority of this billion dollar industry?  But the market somehow makes us to believe that having hyped sneakers and a high follower count on your Instagram is what defines you as successful “re-sell” business.  Let me tell you this…YOU ARE WRONG!!!

I’m not saying you can’t strive in this ultra competitive segment of the market of hyped sneakers, but it’s going to be tough to compete with the current existing juggernauts.  If we are up against the odds, how can one stay alive in this market?  Well maybe think about the rest of the 95% of the sneaker market that has vast amount of unlimited supply with price anomalies.  What I mean by price anomalies is when the market is not efficient, there is an imbalance of supply and demand and when this exists, this allows for market players to take advantage of the price differences to re-distribute the market to equilibrium.  How would I put this in a different perspective for you to better understand?

Let’s take these 2 pairs of shoes for example.  A pair highly coveted Nike Air Jordan 1 Chicago 2015 retros and a pair of…well not so desired Nike Vapormax utility.  Before I go on…let me get one thing straight.  Just because they are un-desired by some it doesn’t mean it’s undesirable by others.  Now let’s get into the money…If you were lucky in 2015, you would have scored a pair of Chicago 1s for retail which was $160 USD.  Let’s say you held this pair till today and flipped it for $900 USD.  Cool right?!? Let’s just assume you don’t incur any transaction fee and pocket $750 USD in profit.  You’re here sitting thinking you’re the man because you flipped a shoe for 5x the profit in 3 years.  Don’t get me wrong…the feeling is amazing, BUT for you to be a business you better have 100 pairs of these to flip or else the $750 you just made in 3 years can’t even pay rent for the month!

Let’s look at the other side of the spectrum.  These so called highly “un-desired” Vapormaxes were selling for $109 USD on sale.  I had all the supply I wanted at this price because stores just wanted these GONE! I was able to determine that these were actually selling for a tad more on other platforms, so I took a good amount of pairs that I was comfortable with and flipped them for a small profit.  We’re not guaranteed a profit as it’s still a gamble. I was selling them for $160 USD and after transaction cost I was pocketing about $35-$40 profit per pair.  So how many pairs do I have to sell to equate to the $750 profit I would have gotten for the Chicago 1s?  I have to sell 20 pairs to make the case comparable.  I had 35 pairs at the time and I could have gotten more if I really wanted too, but I felt 35 was more than enough.  I made approximately $1,330 for flipping 35 pairs of Vapormax Utilities that no one wanted in less than 1 month.  And to be fair and to make the comparison apples to apples…the $750 profit on the Chicago 1s took 3 years to achieve. That’s 36 months!! So technically to put it in the same time frame, I really realistically only made $20 in 30 days for my Chicago 1s vs. $1,330 for the 35 pairs of Vapromax’s i flipped.  Mind blown right?

I could go on for days about this, but I’m going to keep it short for now.  Here’s the punch line for you today.  ANYONE and I mean anyone can re-sell a Chicago 1 2015 retro…it honestly doesn’t take a rocket scientist to just click an accept BID on StockX, print a label and ship it and cash out.  HOWEVER, NOT everyone can re-sell a Vapormax Utility.  As i mentioned before…in order for you to have a sustainable business you need to have volume.  Having 1 pair of Chicago 1 to hold for 3 years doesn’t make you a good re-seller.  You could be just lucky hitting the raffle that ONE time in your life.  How many of us out there hit it on the regular….let me break it to you…NOT MANY!!!! Anyways…I could continue on part 2 of this in the future if there is enough responses or comments, but this part 1 should be enough to make you understand what a re-sell business is really about!